The environments where people live, work and interact play a crucial role in shaping their health, wellbeing and social inclusion. When designed with care, the built environment can enhance comfort, facilitate recovery and promote fairness. However, poorly designed environments can contribute to stress, diminish wellbeing and reinforce social inequalities. Since buildings are among the most influential components of the built environment, they offer significant opportunities to actively support the wellbeing of their occupants through design strategies that go beyond simply minimizing harm.

In the Nature-Inspired Design for Human Wellbeing project (BUILDWELL) researchers explore how ideas inspired by natural systems can be incorporated into building design to support the wellbeing of occupants. The project aims to explore how different aspects of nature-inspired design can affect wellbeing, considering both building features and individual differences. Through this work researchers, seek to offer insights into how elements of natural environments can be reflected in the everyday spaces where people spend most of their time, indoors.

BUILDWELL aims to investigate the interactions between nature-inspired design features, characteristics of the built environment, and individual moderating factors, including cultural, regional, and personal differences that shape human responses to nature-based elements in buildings. Recognizing that wellbeing outcomes vary across individuals and contexts, the project applies a personalized approach to support more flexible and inclusive design strategies.

A key objective of the project is to create a clear and reliable methodology for evaluating wellbeing in relation to nature-inspired building design. The approach will be thoughtfully developed, carefully tested and validated to help understand how specific design choices can enhance or affect the wellbeing of building occupants.

The project (N2-0386) runs from January 2025 until December 2026 and is coordinated by InnoRenew CoE, UP IAM. It is led by Dr. Michael David Burnard, with Špela Vrtovec as a member of the research team. Funding for the project is provided by the Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency (ARIS).

Expected outcomes of the BUILDWELL project include improved understanding of the role of nature-inspired design in supporting wellbeing in buildings and a robust methodology for future studies. By exploring how design-related, contextual and individual factors interact, the project will clarify when and how nature-inspired approaches may be beneficial and will develop and validate a research methodology to support this investigation.

Cover photo: Miran Kambič

Authors: Lara Prah, Lea Primožič, Dr. Mike Burnard